Hacked! What to Do Following a Cyberattack

Steve Giles, chief information officer (CIO) at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, says the experience of his organization’s 2016 high-profile ransomware attack was among the top three most terrible events he has lived through in his professional and personal life. Hospital officials started to notice that access was blocked to certain servers at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday, so they immediately implemented their downtime procedures as well as internal triage processes. The following morning a ransom message appeared on Hollywood Presbyterian’s computer terminals, prompting Giles and his colleagues to contact the cyber unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. However, since it was a weekend, the cyber unit put off their own response until Monday, as did the local Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office. Giles and the hospital staff were on their own for the weekend.